It has been nearly thirty years since
the first Hmong familiesarrived to settle in Australia in March
1976. Many more familiesfollowed until 1992 when the last were
accepted from refugeecamps in Thailand. Today, they number
about 1,800.

Given that most of them were former
soldiers or subsistencefarmers from Laos, how have they managed
with their new life inhighly industrialised urban Australia?
This chapter will try to shedsome light on this question and update
the current state of Hmongsettlement in the country since the
first overview on the subjectwhich I gave at an international
conference on Hmong refugees in1983 (Lee 1986).

The Hmong form part of the Indochinese
refugee intake that theAustralian government took from the
newly installed communistregimes in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in
1975. Technically,they are Lao refugees of Hmong
ethnicity. At the beginning, it wasrelatively easy to get accepted into
Australia under the UnitedNations Convention, so many refugees
stayed for only a short timein the camps along the Thai border with
Laos. Then there wereonly simple forms to fill in, but these
bureaucratic requirementsgradually became more complicated as
forms become moreformalised and longer. When the
never-ending stream ofapplicants became larger, it was more
difficult for Indochineseasylum seekers to be recognised as
genuine refugees by the UnitedNations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
andAustralia. Some were seen as economic
rather than politicalrefugees. During the 1980s, many Hmong
families were thusaccepted under the Family Reunion
programme rather than aspolitical refugees. Under this programme,
relatives already living inAustralia had to submit sponsorship
applications for those leftbehind in Thai refugee camps. The latter
were then interviewed byAustralian immigration officials to see
if they were suitable forsettlement in Australia. If they were
accepted, they then underwentmedical checks and waited in the Phanat
Nikhom transit centre inChonburi from three to six months for
their departure.

Once arrived in Australia, most Hmong
refugees chose tolive where their sponsoring relatives
were already established,mostly in the main cities of the eastern
states. By 1984, theHmong numbered 81 families with 384
persons found in Sydney(215 persons), Melbourne (112), Hobart
(37), Adelaide (11) andCanberra (9). The population was
relatively young with 55 percent under the age of eighteen (Lee
1988: 535).

By 1996, the Australian census revealed
a total of 1,420Hmong speakers in Australia dispersed in
the following way: 603in Queensland, 384 in Victoria, 272 in
Tasmania, 126 in NewSouth Wales, 29 in the Australian
Capital Territory, 7 in WesternAustralia and five in South Australia.
Compared to the 1984population figures, the Hmong have
become more numerousthrough further intakes from Thailand
and natural increase,although they have remained one of the
smallest ethniccommunities in Australia. Queensland has
become the state withthe largest number of Hmong, due to
secondary migration fromthe southern states to Cairns and Innisfail. By 1992, intakes ofHmong refugees from Thai camps had
virtually ceased with theplanned closing of all the refugee camps
in Thailand that year bythe UNHCR and the Thai authorities.
Thus, any demographicchanges within the Hmong community in
Australia are due tointernal population movements, and any
increase in the number ofHmong in Queensland means a decrease in
other states,particularly in New South Wales.

The first Queensland migration occurred
in 1987 when MrLao Lee and his family from Sydney
started a banana farm inInnisfail and attracted a lot of
interest from other Hmong (see alsoTapp, this volume). The family was
reported to make good moneyworking for itself, compared to the
majority of other Hmong whocontinued to work in unskilled jobs
bringing in only small wages.

After 1993, other families had decided
to sell their family homesand move to Innisfail. Gradually, they
were joined by otherfamilies from Melbourne and Hobart. The
reason for most ofthem was to go into the banana growing
business, with more thantwenty families buying banana
plantations. Other familiesmigrated to be with relatives, or to
live in a tropical environmentwith vegetation that reminded them of
their old mountain life inLaos, unlike other parts of Australia
with their monotonous boringgum trees. Those without banana farms
themselves often foundwork with those who had such farms.
Others settled in Cairnswhere they work in hotels and
restaurants as cooks and dishwashers,or as vegetable-stall keepers.[1]

Apart from this internal migration, the
Hmong communityin Australia has also experienced change
due to some menmarrying Hmong wives from Laos, France
or the United States.A few young women have also joined their
Hmong husbandsliving in the United States or France.
So far three young men andabout ten young women have made such a
move. Some met theirspouses through the internet, others
through visits to relatives inthe United States or in Australia. By
and large, however, this intercountrymigration has been small, except for a
group of fifteenHmong families with about 80 persons who
were accepted by NewZealand in 1998, but have since all
crossed the Tasman Sea to livewith the larger Hmong population of
Australia (see Julian, thisvolume).

In mid-2003, it was estimated that there
were 104 Hmongfamilies living in far north Queensland
(Cairns, Innisfail andAtherton) with more than 800 members.
Sydney has 28 familiesand 140 persons, Canberra seven families
with 30 persons,Melbourne more than 70 families and 435
persons, Hobart thirteenfamilies and 95 persons, and Adelaide
one family with four people(a Hmong man married to an Australian
wife). The 1996Australian census shows a Hmong family
with six persons living inPerth, but not much is known about them
as no contact has beenpossible. The latest trend for the Hmong
is secondary migrationtowards Brisbane where there are more
than 60 families and closeto 350 persons. The current population
number of more than1,700 Hmong living in Australia has not
changed much since1996. There have been about 40 deaths
since 1976, and naturalincrease has been small as young Hmong
couples gradually adoptthe Australian habit of having fewer
children. The average Hmongcouple now tends to have about four
children, compared to theirparents who may have had from six to
eight surviving a children ageneration ago.

Before 1994 there were no Hmong living
in Brisbane, butcheaper housing and a warmer climate
began to attract many ofthose living in the southern states,
particularly those from NewSouth Wales and Victoria where by 2003
house prices had becomeso high that many young families could
no longer afford to buytheir own homes. Some of those who moved
more recently wereable to buy houses built on five-acre
land parcels that could still beobtained for around $200,000 when such a
sum would not evenbuy a small building block of 600 square
metres in the southernstates. Chambers Flat, a semi-rural
suburb in southern Brisbane,now has many Hmong families living in
this way. Other familiesbought homes in other nearby suburbs,
although they live quitedispersed from one another, unlike the
Hmong in other cities whotend to live in close proximity to each
other. The reason for thiswide dispersal may be due to the fact
that different families movedto Brisbane at different times and from
different states, not alwaysknowing each other well so that there
was less reason to stay closetogether. They are also the latest of a
migration trend, having livedin other states for a long time and so
are now able to look afterthemselves well. They thus do not feel
the need to live near otherHmong, although there is still much
interaction between them.

As with most refugees, the Hmong are
predominantly politicalasylum seekers who were accepted into
Australia on this basis or onthe grounds of family reunion. This
means that education andqualifications were not at the top of
the criteria for their admissioninto the country, although the
Australian government was selectivein regard to a preference for younger
people and smaller families.In Sydney in 1987, for example, only
twelve of the 80 Hmongfamilies there had members who were
older than 50, mainlyelderly parents living with their
married children. In 1995, it wasfound that of the 32 Hmong households
remaining in Sydney,37 per cent of their members were in the
0–10 age group, with54 per cent under twenty (Wang 1998–99:
40). The Hmongpopulation was thus relatively young,
compared to the Australianaverage of 54.3 per cent under 35 years
of age, according to the1991 census.

Laos was not only one of the least
developed countries inSoutheast Asia, with few schools and
road infrastructures thatallowed access between cities and
country residences, but also hadbeen ravaged by civil war on and off
since 1953. The Hmong wholived in rural and remote areas of the
country had fewopportunities to study in the lowlands
where most schools were.More schools were built in Hmong
settlements after the 1970s, sothat nearly all the younger Hmong who
arrived in Australia before1985 had received at least some primary
schooling in Laos, with afew even having completed high school or
teacher training college.Most of their parents were, however,
illiterate, although some wenton to study English in Australia and
managed to achieve someliteracy. With their subsistence farming
background and lack offormal education, many of the older
Hmong were eager to take upEnglish lessons as a first step towards
settling into the Australiancommunity. In those days, the Australian
government was stillgenerous with migrant and refugee
services with no restrictions onthe number of hours one spent learning
English. Many olderHmong were able to study English for a
few years, rather than the530 hours allocated to new migrants
today.

During the early years of their arrival
here, it was relativelyeasy for the Hmong to get factory jobs
if they were willing to doany kind of work. Employers were mainly
interested in workerswho were prepared to learn and to work
hard. There was also lesscompetition for jobs, since there were
few or no written or generalknowledge tests of the type to which
today’s employers usuallysubject job applicants. Many Hmong, both
men and women, werethus able to obtain paid work within
three to six months ofentering Australia. They were keen to
leave the migrant hostels tosettle in the general community, and
wanted to work in order toachieve this. Although some sought jobs
through the thenCommonwealth Employment Service, the
majority found workthrough friends and relatives, or
private employment agencies.

Apart from a few months spent studying
English, hardlyanyone took up retraining to return to
their former professionssuch as teaching or the public service.
Most did not have tertiaryeducation, unlike Vietnamese refugees,
some of whom were able tore-enter their old fields of work. The
Hmong realised too well thatthey could not compete against native
English speakers, nor didthey have the time to undertake long
courses of studies. Familyobligations and the need to re-establish
themselves as quickly aspossible in their new country meant that
the sooner they couldbecome self-supporting, the better it
would be for their families.Young children became the priority for
parents who, like allmigrants, pinned their hopes more
realistically on the nextgeneration rather than themselves.

Nevertheless, the employment rate of the
Hmong in generalhas continued to improve over the years.
In 1987, for example,35 per cent of the Hmong community in
Sydney wereunemployed and of those employed, 93 per
cent were processworkers doing unskilled factory jobs
(Lee 1986). In 1995, Wang(1998–99: 48) discovered that this
unemployment rate had comedown to 27 per cent (12.5 per cent among
females and 33 per centamong males) with a significant
proportion of those employeddoing semi-skilled or unskilled jobs,
compared to 93 per cent in1987. The number of skilled workers had
also increased (30 percent among females and 19 per cent among
males). The few whocould obtain formal qualifications
seemed to be in more secure andwell paid jobs — a trend that, Wang
(1998–99: 49) observes maycontinue for those younger Hmong who are
still at school today.

During their first years in Australia,
the main tangible signof the Hmong’s ability to adapt and move
ahead was the possessionof cars, at least one for each family.
Cars were seen not only as asymbol of wealth, but an essential means
for getting to work, forshopping or to socialise. Soon, however,
a few Hmong familiesbegan to buy their first homes. By the
mid-eighties, many of themwere living in houses that they had
bought or were paying off.Wang (1998–99: 42) found that 42 per
cent of the 32 families shesurveyed in Sydney already owned their
own home by 1995 and19 per cent were paying them off. This
represents a much higherrate of home ownership than the
Australian average of 41 per cent,and far higher than the figures of 13
per cent for Vietnamese and14 per cent for Cambodian-born refugees.
Wang attributes this tothe fact that the Hmong prefer to direct
their money into moreproductive use by paying off their
mortgages rather than spendingit on rental accommodation. Hmong
families also help each otherwith deposits towards the purchase of
houses for relatives, thusallowing more of them to own their homes
much earlier.

Apart from their own principal place of
residence, a numberof Hmong families have also gone into
real estate investment -with six families now having from one to
five investmentproperties. This high rate of home
ownership has enabled manyHmong families to migrate later to
Cairns and Innisfail in northQueensland, as mentioned above, using
the money they obtainedfrom the sale of their houses to buy
farm lands or to finance theirmove, to purchase new houses, and to
lease or buy their bananafarms or other businesses. Many of those
who did not have thisinitial capital have also worked hard
hiring out their labour inbanana plantations, or doing market
gardening. This has allowedsome to buy their own houses, while
others still remain in rentedaccommodation.

Having been in Australia for thirty
years with only a smallpopulation and the second generation
just starting to get into thework force, the Hmong may not have made
much headway intovarious social and economic strata of
the Australian community.However, most have been able to
re-establish themselveseconomically, found employment and
become homeowners —even those who have not been able to
find permanentemployment. Given their background as
subsistence farmers,students and soldiers in Laos, they have
done well in the face ofmany language, social and cultural
barriers.

On the whole, the majority of the older
Hmong in Australia tendto stay among themselves and have little
or no social interactionwith people outside their own small
community. In a sense, this isno different from most ethnic groups.
The first generation of newarrivals often maintains some strong
community ties that continueto hold them together as a linguistic
and cultural community,while the second generation of children
who are born or raised inthe new country tends to venture further
into the broadercommunity and prefers to mix socially
with other groups.

The Hmong are no different in this
adjustment pattern.Like other communities, they have
learned to adopt various meansto help them settle into their new life
in a Western andpredominantly Christian society. Their
traditional social structureof clans and extended families has been
disrupted by the long yearsof war and resettlement as refugees in
various parts of the world.No one family has been able to have all
its relatives living in onecountry: there may be a few closely
related married brotherstogether in Australia, but married
sisters may have gone to Americaor France with their husbands, while
other relatives may still be leftbehind in Laos. The Hmong have thus gone
through a real globaldiaspora, and with it many adjustments
have had to be made totheir cultural practices and traditional
social relations.

Among these changes, the most important
are those relatingto the clan system, used as the primary
means of identifyingrelationships on the basis of the
sharing of a clan name, whom onecould marry and whom one could not
marry, and who couldparticipate in a family’s ritual
performances, funerals and celebrations.In the first ten years of their
settlement, only eight clans wererepresented among the Hmong in
Australia: Chang, Lee, Moua,Thao, Vang, Vue, Yang and Xiong. Later,
members of the Hangand Kue clans were added. But this still
does not include all sixteenclans as is commonly found in Southeast
Asia. This has somewhatrestricted the choice of marriage
partners since Hmong can onlymarry outside their own clan group. In a
sense, however, thissituation has also forced the Hmong to
forge other ties in order toremain close as a community on grounds
other than by clanrelationship alone.

A new social structure that the Hmong
have adopted as anadditional means to help in their
settlement is the formation ofmutual assistance associations. The
first such organisation was theHmong Australia Society (HAS) which was
formed by Dr PaoSaykao in Melbourne in 1978.

The Society aims to unite all Hmong
residents in Australiaas a community in order to maintain the
Hmong identity. It servesas the focus where the Hmong turn for
assistance in times of need,sickness and bereavement. It also
promotes understanding of theHmong and their culture to the broader
Australian society. TheSociety has a federal body and is
represented in different states bystate branches with executive
committees. The federal executivecommittee rotates every two years
between Tasmania, Victoria,New South Wales and Queensland where
most of the Hmong live.Nearly all Hmong in Australia were HAS
members.

In the early years, HAS initiated many
projects formembers, such as teaching Hmong language
and culture toHmong school children, and provided
settlement informationsessions on various subjects deemed
useful for the successfulintegration of the Hmong into the
Australian community. It heldsocial functions, picnics and the Hmong
New Year celebration toencourage members to get together as
often as possible. In order topromote Hmong culture, classes on Hmong
religious rituals werealso held for interested young adults to
learn to perform rituals intheir own homes. HAS also participated
in festivals andcelebrations organised by local councils
and other groups bylending them Hmong costumes and
handicrafts for display, orgiving talks and traditional dance
performances. Young Hmongdancers became very popular and were
often invited to perform invarious locations in each state. Within
the Hmong community,HAS executive members were kept busy
helping with familyproblems, collecting members’
contributions towards funeral costs,and ensuring that members followed the
Society’s rules regardingfuneral arrangements, wedding costs and
dowries.

In later years, many of these activities
stopped as HASmembers became more skilled in finding
their own way around thebroader community. Hmong language
learning through formalclasses also ceased, as young children
grew up preferring to speakEnglish. Disagreements among members in
Victoria and far northQueensland also saw some members
splitting away from HAS andforming their own small associations
such as the HmongFederation Council. A need-specific
group, the SPK Inc., alsocame into existence in Cairns to serve
the housing needs of newHmong arrivals in the area. These new
groups, and other factors,have now made many of the HAS activities
redundant. There havebeen talks about abolishing HAS, but the
majority of memberswant to keep it going for, if nothing
else, it still retains its majorfunction of collecting member
contributions for funerals and otheremergencies.

One of the original aims of HAS which
brought high hopesand great enthusiasm to members in the
early years was theteaching of religious rituals and
cultural performances for youngermembers. Although many sessions were
held using elderly ritualexperts and experienced funeral
reed-pipe players as teachers, theprogramme only ran for a year and
yielded few results. The fewyoung men interested in such cultural
learning were also too busyworking for a living and found the extra
time they had to put induring evenings or weekends too
demanding. Similar classes arenow being held in Melbourne with good
participation, and it ishoped that they will be more successful.
A few ritual experts werelater sponsored from the refugee camps
to come and help with thecommunity’s spiritual needs, but their
small number did notamount to much in terms of promoting and
maintaining thecommunity’s cultural knowledge.

Having been in Australia for nearly
thirty years, one of the biggestchallenges to the Hmong is the loss of
traditions and languageamong the younger members of the
community. Like othermigrant groups, members of the younger
generation quickly learnto adopt social values and behaviour
patterns considered to bealien or detrimental to the beliefs and
culture of their parents. Upto the age of six, most children speak
Hmong well and are not shyto do so. As soon as they start going to
school, however, theygradually come to use more and more
English so that by the timethey reach puberty few want to speak
Hmong or even know howto anymore.

Few also take part or show much interest
in religious ritualsas they are observed or performed by
their parents. The Hmongpractices of animism and ancestor
worship mean that a familyhead has to know how to carry out at
least some simple rituals, forthe Hmong’s religion is essentially a
family religion. Many elderlyHmong today are concerned that their
traditional religiouspractices will die out after they are
gone, and no one will knowhow to make offerings to them in the
afterworld.

Even with the present first generation,
this process ofcultural and religious degeneration is
already occurring with somehusbands knowing less about rituals than
their wives. Althoughwomen can also perform household
rituals, the latter are generallymen’s responsibility. Men who have
formal education spent manyyears away from their families to gain
this education, and are thusless skilled in ritual matters. However,
their wives are often morefamiliar with preparing ritual food and
may know more aboutperforming small household rituals. They
are thus the culturalcarriers in such households. Apart from
this, it has been found thatchildren who grew up in Australia but
who were born overseas areusually more accepting of their parents’
religious practices andassociated food offerings to ancestors.
They will at least eat ritualfood which is often prepared from
chicken or small pigsslaughtered for the purpose. Children
who are born in Australiaand who are not familiar with such
practices often shun theconsumption of such food, let alone take
an active interest in therituals themselves.

Another challenge to the Hmong in
Australia is thedifference between the expectations of
parents of their children’sacademic achievements, and the actual
outcomes. As stated above,the majority of parents did not have a
high school education, butwere willing to work hard in order to
put their children throughthe education system at as high a level
as possible. They put alltheir hopes for good jobs and high pay
in their children, and havehigh expectations of the latter
achieving these hopes. However, fewHmong children in Australia have been
able to fulfill their parents’academic expectations. Many are more
eager to get into the workforce, even if it means doing unskilled
menial jobs, than trying togain further qualifications. Since their
settlement here, less thanten young Hmong have graduated from
universities, althoughmost have managed to complete Year 12 in
high school and wenton to do further vocational training at
TAFE colleges. Currently,about half a dozen young men and women
are enrolled inbachelor’s degree university courses in
Cairns, Sydney andMelbourne. It is hoped that this trend
will encourage others tofollow them.

Where will the Hmong of Australia go to
from here? After the firstgeneration, will their children still
retain enough of their Hmongcultural heritage to be called Hmong? Or
will they be Australian intheir hearts and minds, and Hmong only
in their appearance?These are questions that many elderly
Hmong in Australia, likethose in America, are asking themselves.
They are wonderingwhether they have not tried hard enough
to change and to fit intotheir new environment, or whether their
children are trying toohard and changing too fast. The big
challenges are no longerrelated to those of economic survival or
the accumulation ofmaterial assets. Most families are now
comfortably off materially,like the majority of the Australian
people. What they face andworry more about is the survival of
their cultural identity in themidst of the vast ethnic diversity in
this country.

The dilemma of how much to retain of
their own cultureand how much to change to accommodate
the demands of thebroader community around them is real,
and too complex to dwellon here. Many Hmong realise that they
need to change, and arealready changing in many respects. There
can be no turning backto the old times, for even things in the
old country they originatedfrom are fast changing. They have
enjoyed freedom and manyother benefits coming to live in
Australia, and are trying tocontribute as much as they can to their
new country while stillfollowing some of their old traditions
in order to maintain somekind of cultural identity. The next
generation will have to maketheir own social accommodation and find
their own way ahead —probably more as Australians, but
perhaps also as Hmong. If theHmong of north Queensland are any
indication of future trends,members of the younger generation will
continue to marry withintheir own community and maintain their
mother tongue evenwhile interacting frequently with non-Hmong
people and usingEnglish most of the time.